Judicial Watch has announced that it is suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), after this federal agency ignored the group’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Judicial Watch had asked for all information that Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is a part of DHS, has compiled regarding the nonprofit and its president, Tom Fitton.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
The deadline to submit these records, under FOIA rules, was October 11. The controversy now includes the (subsequent to the request) public revelation that Fitton was named as one of the “censorship targets” of a network known as the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP).
In early November, the House Judiciary Committee confirmed suspicions about what was going on behind the scenes, stating in a report that CISA, together with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), Stanford University, and others, had formed EIP – with the goal of censoring speech ahead of the hotly contested 2020 election.
All major social platforms, including Google, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, and Twitter were to be pressured to censor what the government agencies and their allies in academia decided to brand as disinformation.
This is not the first time Judicial Watch is turning to the courts to try to reveal the mechanisms of censorship implemented online, and the links tying government agencies to those acts, that, if proven to be true, would be unconstitutional.
DHS is among those already sued for records on several occasions over the past year, as was the FBI, the Secretary of State of the State of California, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and the Department of Justice.
The recurring theme here are the attempts to suppress speech related to elections as “disinformation,” and instances of collusion between the authorities and privately-owned social media companies.
Speaking about the latest revelations and the lawsuit, and the fact that his organization and himself have been repeatedly targeted by the government and its Big Tech allies, Tom Fitton said, “That we had to file a federal lawsuit to get basic information about this targeting is another sure sign that CISA has been up to no good.”
The nonprofit’s other efforts to shed light on some of the most controversial issues in the US over the past years include records showing that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Facebook “coordinated closely.”
“Judicial Watch has produced a four-part documentary, ‘Censored and Controlled’, that details the coordinated effort by the FBI and other government agencies and Big Tech to censor and suppress information on topics such as Hunter Biden’s laptop, Covid-19, and election debates,” the group said in a statement.
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